Pacifying the Right Customers

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Self-service solutions for customers may save businesses money, but at what price?
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing-or so goes the saying, which warns against thinking one knows more than one does. But for businesses that want customers to resolve problems without talking to live call-center agents, the danger is that a company that doesn't give customers enough information will lose them. When customers are directed to a Web site or an automated phone service, they're looking for the quickest path to the knowledge they need.

Upholding the bottom line in these leaner economic times often means putting customers in charge of their own problem solving. How well they are able to find answers to their queries will undoubtedly leave an impression that will affect their future dealings with a company. This is especially true in a wireless context, where slow connection times and a limited user interface will remain the hallmark of the wireless experience for some time to come.

At this stage, the actual demand for wireless CRM implementations has been limited, admits Brad Wilson, vice president of product marketing at E.piphany, a confession that might sound odd coming from a guy whose job is to evangelize his company's products and services. "Mostly right now we're seeing a lot of pilot tests," he says. "There is a wait-and-see attitude, both with the devices out there and with what kind of infrastructure will be out there." Once the bandwidth improves, in about the next 18 months, he believes customers will expect wireless CRM solutions to be up and running.

A customer's own experience and understanding of the technology will make a difference in how he or she responds to these solutions. "There is huge variability in customer readiness and sophistication," says Adrian Slywotzky, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and co-author of How Digital is Your Business? (Crown, 2000). Customers who are deeply immersed in technology, as opposed to those who are just beginning to dabble in it, will naturally use and understand CRM solutions differently.

Jump Through the Hoop
The problem of self-service is exacerbated when a company makes interaction a challenge for the end user, hiding behind the interfaces it has built. "If people attempt to find an answer and can't, there has to be a one-click method to find someone with real brain power," says Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies.

Gianforte believes that most self-service options are ineffective and leave the customer feeling dissatisfied. "When people put up self-service and block all methods to a human interaction, that creates problems," he says. "At the heart of any good self-service system is the knowledge itself."

RightNow offers a method of determining frequently asked questions that might be posed by a customer visiting a Web site from different access points. Currently the company provides technology for WAP phones and is beta testing a version for Palm devices.

Callbutton, an ASP, takes a different approach, acting as an intermediary between the customer and the call center. Its service, which can be used as a sales lead-tracking tool, provides a way to capture a caller's contact information and route it to the appropriate sales representative, according to Callbutton president and CEO Mike Markette. At that point, the customer gets a call wherever she is based on the information she provides, so the business can be proactive.

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Black, Jason - (2001, June 1) Pacifying the Right Customers - Internet World